Yuri thought Rex would appreciate her taking him on a spot of rock pool dipping, figuring that he would enjoy nosing around exploring what creatures has been left behind in the pools by the retreating tide. What he certainly didn’t enjoy was finding out that squatting on a sea urchin was not such a good idea…
I live in Japan,, so I’ve eaten sea urchin quite a few times. But until I came here, I’d never really heard of a sea urchin, let alone eaten one. And I certainly never imagined that they could become a topic for a cartoon.
I’m involved in a cartoon challenge where we have to come up with an idea for a cartoon by putting two elements together. One of the elements is a base - in my case dogs - and remains the same. The other elements changes everyday. Recently some of these elements have included ‘cookies’, ‘surfing’, ‘umbrella’, and ‘wood chipper’. Today it was the turn of sea urchin.
Now you may have no interest in sea urchins whatsoever. However, this article aims to help you to come up with some ideas for gags for equally unusual objects.
We’re going to explore some ideas by keeping in mind the following two points:
Resemblance
Exagerration
But first, let’s do a mindmap about sea urchins.
Resemblance
What does a sea urchin look like?
While you may not be familiar with the sea urchin it may remind you of some things that are more familiar.
List three things that it resembles.
1.
2.
3.
Here are mine:
1. Cactus
2. Nails
3. Hedgehog
Is there anything else you could exagerrate?
Over to you:
Try doodling a sea urchin appearing in a completely different situation, or substitute something the urchin for something that resembles it, as with the cartoon above.
Exaggeration
Remember that it’s a cartoon, so you’ve license to sketch and push things a bit. In fact, a cartoon often calls for it.
So let’s look at what we could exaggerate with the sea urchin.
One of the most obvious things you can exaggerate is the size.
What else could you exagerrate?
Over to you:
Pick an unusual object or creature.
Do a quick mindmap. You can mindmap whatever words come to mind, or pose questions as in the previous example.
What does the object/creature resemble?
What features can you exaggerate about the object/creature?
Doodle and have some fun!
Time for one more quick cartoon from an idea that came up in the mindmap.
Seeing as otters love playing, and sea otters love eating sea urchins, I thought I’d combine the two ideas together for the juggling otter above.
Summary
Here is what we covered:
Use a mindmap to help generate ideas
Resemblance
Exaggeration
